The Roots of Planned Parenthood

Author:

Jay Watts

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Article ID:

JAF1223JW

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Updated: 

Dec 14, 2023

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Published:

Dec 12, 2023

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In his opening statements to the courtroom in the film A Few Good Men (1992), Kevin Bacon’s character presents the core of his case and then states to the jury, “These are the facts of the case, and they are undisputed.”1

The case for and against Planned Parenthood functions in the same manner. The facts of what Planned Parenthood does in the number of abortions performed, their political advocacy, and their championing of a libertine view of sexual wellness and sexual ethics are undisputed. Disagreements exist over what percentage of their services are abortion centered or whether they sell the remains of aborted human lives to third party research firms for profit versus routine organ donation practices, but the nature of their actions and advocacies are acknowledged by all. Those who celebrate Planned Parenthood tend to celebrate abortion, and those who hate Planned Parenthood tend to hate abortion.

Therein lies the heart of the controversy. Planned Parenthood is more than simply another organization or influential individual defending abortion; to a large degree, they are the face of abortion in America. They perform more abortions than any other entity in the United States,2 defend abortion access beyond any other organization,3 and enjoy the accolades and financial support of corporations and celebrities to champion abortion. When abortion is under attack, Planned Parenthood is the rallying point for advocates. When abortion legislation is winning politically, Planned Parenthood is a power behind the scenes fueling the efforts.

Christian charity requires optimism about the possible redemption of individuals and the need to respect persons, even immoral persons, as the image bearers of God. Institutions, however, can be irredeemable by nature. All non-profits serve an articulated mission statement, so if the mission is compromised — if the purpose of the organization is to pursue evil — then the entire enterprise deserves condemnation. Any group, no matter how corrupt, may incidentally do some good, but that does not justify defending the organization as a whole. Planned Parenthood’s mission statement includes references to concepts that sound promising, such as “full, healthy lives.…inclusive and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care services,”4 but the intended meaning behind those terms reflects a post-Christian worldview. Their definitions of sexual health and sexual wellness radically differ from the traditional Christian views on sex, which characterize sex as something special to be enjoyed in clearly defined, committed relationships. Planned Parenthood’s mission statement also makes it clear that abortion is an integral part of comprehensive healthcare. The organization pursues a mission that is destructive to life by definition and antithetical to historic, biblical Christian views on sexual well-being. However emotionally compelling they may be, anecdotal testimonies of individuals aided by Planned Parenthood are immaterial to a full moral evaluation.

With assets exceeding $2.7 billion, Planned Parenthood reported performing 374,155 abortions in the latest annual report for the year 2021–2022, an annual report appropriately titled “Relentless.”5 They have performed more than 3.4 million abortions in the last 10 years,6 abortions they actively lobbied to be able to perform. A pro-choice individual may argue abortion is morally permissible, but it is unlikely she will perform millions of abortions over her lifetime. Planned Parenthood does just that. They destroy human life at an unimaginable scale, while promoting a view of sexual ethics in direct competition with traditional Christian values surrounding sex, including the embracing of sexual experimentation of all sorts and offering transgender hormonal treatments, which suppress the normal sexual maturation of children and permanently alter human development.

It is not possible to be neutral about Planned Parenthood without being ambivalent toward questions of what it means to be human and who counts as full members of the human family. If each of the unborn is not one of us, then Planned Parenthood is what they claim to be, a champion of rights and women’s access to healthcare opposed by woefully misinformed and often religiously motivated groups and individuals. If each unborn individual is one of us, and we are the image bearers of God, then Planned Parenthood is a ghoulish organization that amassed massive amounts of political and cultural clout to perform unspeakable acts of evil against the most vulnerable members of the human family. Moreover, they undermine sexual ethics that promote the common welfare and encourage self-destructive and soul-destructive behaviors in young people. The facts of the case, what Planned Parenthood does, are undisputed.

ROTTEN FOUNDATIONS

Planned Parenthood originated during a time in which a deeply evil and confused view of humanity took hold of some of the nation’s most prominent and beloved figures.7 The eugenics movement birthed multiple organizations with a mission focused on ensuring that those who early 20th-century eugenicists considered the right kind of people had children, while the wrong kind of people’s population rightfully dwindled. Although the name Planned Parenthood was decades away from being used, the first activities of the nascent organization began its effort to control birth rates under the name American Birth Control League. As I will show, evidence suggests they sought more than the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure or the empowerment of women to control their bodies; they pursued measures to control how often less desirable classes of people had children.

The standard practice of Planned Parenthood representatives and supporters for the last few decades was to unconditionally celebrate the full one hundred plus years of Planned Parenthood’s service to the American community and defend the founder, a nurse named Margaret Sanger, against charges of motivations centered on eugenics by casting her as a virtuous advocate tainted by the political realities of her time.8 They continued to award women, and a few men, who showed extraordinary support for Planned Parenthood’s cause with The Margaret Sanger Award through 2015, the highest honor they could bestow to such luminaries as Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. That approach began to change when social justice activist and Planned Parenthood Board of Directors member Alexis McGill Johnson replaced the ousted Dr. Leana Wen as the president of Planned Parenthood of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund in 2019.9 In a 2021 New York Times op-ed, McGill Johnson publicly condemned the legacy of Margaret Sanger, including her eugenicist and racist beliefs.10

Sanger began what would become Planned Parenthood by disseminating information on birth control out of an office in Brooklyn, New York, in 1916 in violation of the Comstock Laws pertaining to obscenity and dispensing diaphragms through the mail.11 Her supporters romanticize this beginning, casting it in the light of sexual liberation. Some of the motives were far less elevated. Early 20th-century eugenicists viewed society through the lens of Darwinian concepts. The lower classes tended to breed faster and more abundantly than the desired classes comprised of the financially viable and educated people who were most often of Anglo-Saxon descent.12 Birth control provided the means to equip the less desirable classes of humanity to limit their reproduction and help reduce their negative impact on society. This understanding of the early birth control movement comports closely with certain biographical facts, including that

—Sanger frequently cooperated with eugenicists believing an alliance with the then popular idea benefited her movement;13

—Sanger’s American Birth Control League originally “work[ed] out of office space provided by the American Eugenics Society in 1923”;14

—racist Lathrop Stoddard, who coined the vile term “Untermensch” embraced by the Nazis,15 sat on her founding board of directors of the American Birth Control League;16

—Sanger spoke to a Ku Klux Klan women’s auxiliary group to raise support for her cause in 1926;17

—she supported the U.S. Supreme Court decision Buck v. Bell (1927), which legalized forcible sterilization of biologically unfit Americans;18

—in 1955 she participated in experimenting on more than 200 Puerto Rican women without informed consent, using early versions of oral contraceptives much more powerful than what is considered safe today, three of whom died during the testing.19

Moreover, as H. Wayne House explains,

In 1933 the magazine for Planned Parenthood, known in Sanger’s day as Birth Control Review, actually published “Eugenic Sterilization: An Urgent Need,” by Ernst Rudin, Hitler’s director of genetic sterilization and founder of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene.20 Later that year it published an article by E. A. Whitney, entitled “Selective Sterilization,” which strongly praised and defended Nazi racial programs.21

Though praising eugenics, Sanger saw birth control as the best way to rid society of what she called “feebleminded” people (those whose mental ability was less than that of a 12-year-old). She estimated that such people constituted almost 50 percent of the U.S. population.22

Sanger’s early mission was focused on championing the position that birth control created an opportunity to improve the world. She adamantly expressed concern over the impact that uncontrollable childbirth had on women and fervently voiced the desire for women to control whether they got pregnant or not, but any apparent noble aspirations co-existed in a heap of stomach-turning ideas about what human life is worthy to be preserved, what races are most capable of building a society, and what people were appropriate subjects of experimentation.

POLITICAL ACTIVISM BEGINS

Legal and political lobbying became important to Planned Parenthood’s mission, as they fought state laws forbidding the sale and use of contraception even within marriage. Eugenics had fallen out of favor because of abuses both in the U.S. and Nazi Germany, and this was the impetus behind dropping the words “birth control” from their title, adopting the new title Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942.23 As medical technology advanced, so did the efforts of Planned Parenthood to expand access. They took their efforts globally in 1952 with the creation of International Planned Parenthood Federation.

Planned Parenthood aided in bringing about the U.S. Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, a decision that made it legal for married couples to use contraception as a matter of constitutionally protected privacy grounded in emanations and penumbras not explicitly enumerated in the U.S. Constitution.24 Estelle Griswold was the executive director of Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and her arrest for providing illegal contraception sparked the case. This success not only opened the door for their ultimate victories in their advocacy for birth control but established the legal precedent — unenumerated rights to medical privacy — that would ultimately lead to the legalization of abortion in all 50 states through the Supreme Court decisions Roe v. Wade (1973) and Doe v. Bolton (1973).

From Birth Control to Abortion

Sanger actually voiced opposition to abortion and saw birth control as the better option between the two. As she neared the end of her leadership role and Planned Parenthood Federation of America appointed its first medical director Dr. Mary Calderone in 1953, the shift toward abortion began in earnest. The organization Calderone joined looked nothing like today’s Planned Parenthood; she described it as a minor organization and that most male doctors would not have risked their reputations by taking her position.25 Calderone, later joined by new Planned Parenthood president Alan Guttmacher in 1962,26 wanted to protect doctors who perform abortions from punishment and enlist them as agents to control what she termed the disease of illegal abortion.27 Her goal was to enlist major professional medical organizations to embrace family planning as comprehensive medical care. The discovery of antibiotics and refining of abortion methods had made it possible to offer women safe abortions if they are performed by reputable medical professionals. Their shared message was clear: medically assisted abortion is safe. Even illegal abortion is safe, Calderone argued in 1959, as an estimated “90 per cent of all illegal abortions are presently being done by physicians.”28 So, because abortion is happening, place it legally in the hands of medical professionals to get it all out in the open.

In 1970, the first Planned Parenthood affiliates began to offer abortion services, and as an extension of their efforts on birth control, abortion advocacy began to take center stage. The impact of Calderone and Guttmacher’s early focus on what has been termed a “medical gatekeeper model” rather than on women’s autonomy is reflected in the language of the Roe and Doe decisions, criticized even by those who favored the impact of the rulings as being too doctor centered — securing the rights of doctors to perform abortions, and the language that abortion was legal at the doctor’s discretion.29 This language is foreign to today’s feminism, which claims the absolute right to an abortion grounded entirely in the woman’s fundamental right to control her own body and make whatever personal decisions she sees fit to make in regards to her reproductive life.

In 1978, Faye Wattleton became the first black woman to be president of Planned Parenthood. Her plan was to passionately counter the religious right’s resistance to permissive abortion laws. She embraced the narrative of both women and Planned Parenthood as embattled and under attack for seeking sexual freedom.30 Wattleton loved the legacy of Sanger as the fighter, willing to be jailed and hated for advancing the cause of women. Wattleton saw herself in that model. Her efforts combined with those of her successors Gloria Feldt, who founded Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and Cecile Richards, in this author’s opinion one of the most influential and powerful political leaders in a generation, would see Planned Parenthood named in three different U.S. Supreme Court rulings pertaining to abortion31 and become the number one abortion provider in the United States. Planned Parenthood became the face of abortion.

PROTECT ABORTION AT ALL COSTS!

If a value system is corrupt, it will resonate throughout the efforts of any organization. Whatever Planned Parenthood and their supporters would like to believe about the virtue of their goals, the dedication to the evil of abortion leaves traces of that corruption across the whole operation. The pro-life organization Live Action began when its founder, Lila Rose, operated a series of sting videos claiming Planned Parenthood representatives turned a blind eye to apparent statutory rape.32 A further video sting operation by Live Action claimed similar problems, as multiple Planned Parenthood workers seemed to aid abortions in sex trafficking.33 Planned Parenthood responded that further investigation demonstrated that the organization was innocent of wrong doing in every case in a press release34 inspired by the Center for Medical Progress, which claimed Planned Parenthood affiliates were selling the remains of aborted fetuses to research groups for profit.35 A former employee countered that rather than teaching Planned Parenthood workers how to deal more effectively with these criminal situations, they were taught how to identify if someone was filming them.36 A Loyola Chicago University Law School study on the health consequences of sex trafficking found from interviews of sex trafficking survivors that more than 29 percent of those women interviewed visited a Planned Parenthood while being trafficked.37 The report also shares that survivors testified of being treated for a broad range of STD’s and receiving forced abortions while being trafficked. The report does not provide a specific breakdown on which services were received where, but it raises again the troubling specter of sex trafficking and Planned Parenthood sharing an unsettling overlap. More recently a Planned Parenthood in Bend, Oregon, was at the center of controversy involving charges of kidnapping when a 15-year-old girl was transported across state borders from Idaho to Oregon by her 18-year-old boyfriend and his mother without the knowledge or consent of her parents to have an abortion.38 Planned Parenthood denies wrongdoing again and again, yet the same issues resurface. They prioritize abortion and err to the side of supplying it.

To minimize the impact of negative views about abortion from both the public and the politicians controlling the flow of federal dollars toward non-profits, Planned Parenthood tried to make the case that abortion is only a small part of what they do, three or four percent of their total services offered in any given year.39 The math behind this claim has been discredited by people on both sides of the issue, pointing out that to get to those numbers they had to break out services offered in a bundle (e.g., a woman getting an abortion might need an exam, a pregnancy test, an ultrasound, and the actual abortion).40 Planned Parenthood argues that by the numbers a woman received three independent services in addition to the abortion, though none of those services would have been realized outside the context of a woman seeking an abortion. Offer enough abortion related services in independent acts of patient service, and the percentage of the total number that abortion comprises gets smaller.

The Charlotte Lozier Institute has drawn attention to the fact that, however much Planned Parenthood claims they are about more than abortion, they have seen the number of non-abortion related client services decline. From the report:

  • Total services are down 17%.

  • With changing practice guidelines, total cancer screening and prevention services have dropped by 71%, including declines of 74% for breast exams and 70% for pap tests.

  • Prenatal services are down 85% from their peak in 2009.

  • Contraceptive services are down 36%.41 (emphasis in original)

As Planned Parenthood makes their case to the nation that they are essential to comprehensive health care, they seem to be less and less essential to most services other than performing abortions.

Dr. LEANA WEN

More damning evidence of the true focus of Planned Parenthood would be the firing of Dr. Leana Wen from her position as president of Planned Parenthood in 2019.42 Wen had enjoyed a massive amount of success in Baltimore in her efforts to serve her community through advancement of medical treatment for the poor. Her rise to power based on the importance of medical treatment for everyone combined with Planned Parenthood’s efforts to reassure the public they were not exclusively about abortion made the early relationship seem promising. Except what people say and what they believe often diverges. Wen made early efforts to transition Planned Parenthood into an outpost for a broad range of medical services to needy communities while legitimately lowering the intensity of the focus on abortion. The board of directors characterized her efforts as threatening “mission creep”; Wen was losing site of the purpose of the organization. The board relieved Wen of her duties and appointed a fellow board member and activist, Alexis McGill Johnson, to restrengthen the focus on abortion as a good and necessary part of healthcare. Planned Parenthood may claim abortion is only three or four percent of what they do, but the treatment of their own president demonstrates differently.

 

THE GROWING WAR ON TRADITIONAL SEXUAL ETHICS

As the lines of the broadening ideological war become clearer, Planned Parenthood and their affiliates continue to broaden their services to champion libertine views of human sexuality.43 They offer a series of videos across multiple social media platforms discussing in detail with animated demonstrations of varying sexual questions about anatomy, birth control, masturbation, and an extremely disturbing video about knowing when someone wants to have sex, including dramatic enactments and a narrator present watching everything and giving a knowing thumbs up.44 Abortion still surrounds the enterprise. All the sexual wellness videos on YouTube are offered with a healthy dose of abortion stories, updates on abortion laws, and shorts of celebrities voicing their support, but it is clear Planned Parenthood is reaching out to young audiences. They offer a sex ed chat bot named ROO, which any young person can access through their website to answer questions about sexuality, and which they report has been used over 204,000 times.45 I opened the chat bot and found a list of questions prompted to choose from before I ever asked anything, including:

  • What will happen if I masturbate too much?

  • When do I know what pronouns to use?

  • How much does the abortion pill cost?

  • What is the right age to have sex for the first time?

  • Does watching gay porn mean you are gay?

  • How do I book a Planned Parenthood appointment?

Should you ask ROO a question it cannot answer, it refers you to the “Ask the Experts” blog page, which is filled with posts addressing any number of questions about sex, LGBTQ+ issues, and abortion.

In the same article in which Planned Parenthood’s president acknowledges Sanger’s evil, McGill Johnson commits Planned Parenthood to a renewed focus on the needs of marginalized communities, including the trans community.46 She claims this was in response to criticisms, such as the argument that traditional pro-choice language is insufficient to include all the varying groups seeking what is more rightly understood as reproductive justice.47 Pro-choice is an exclusive term and centers the movement on women choosing or not choosing abortion, while the frame of reproductive justice is inclusive and makes the argument about access for a wide range of marginalized groups. McGill Johnson uses this context to identify a new group of enemies of Planned Parenthood, trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), and she even puts the word “feminists” in scare quotes.

Planned Parenthood was already actively offering services to those identifying themselves as members of the trans community. Planned Parenthood facilities first began to offer hormone therapy for transgender individuals back in 2005,48 a practice that continues to expand. As of the most recent annual report, 41 of 49 affiliates offered transgender hormone treatment, including puberty blockers.49 They function as they do with abortion; they operate at the extreme edge of any laws pertaining to age requirements and parental consent allowed by the policy of any given state.50 Currently, the use of puberty blockers requires parental consent, but they concede if a patient is hampered by age requirements, they will refer young people to other service providers who are not bound to the same policies as Planned Parenthood.

THE POWER AND DANGER OF ALLIANCES

Planned Parenthood prides itself on its allies and leverages those relationships to great effect. The true genius of Planned Parenthood is their ability to rally powerful corporate and cultural support to magnify their message. As Princeton professor Robert George, a powerful pro-life voice, repeatedly draws attention to on his social media pages, not a single major celebrity, not a single corporation, not a single major social media influencer will attack a person for supporting Planned Parenthood and abortion rights. It is the easiest public position to take and promises the most immediate support from almost every public personality that those obsessed with popular culture care about. Planned Parenthood notes in their annual report:

More than 1,300 companies of all sizes and industries joined Planned Parenthood as allies in the fight for sexual and reproductive health and rights, including through the Don’t Ban Equality network led by PPFA and allies.

As artists, entertainers, and creators of all generations spoke out against abortion bans, Planned Parenthood coordinated 160+ young artists and creators to sign a statement of support for abortion access that was published as a full-page ad in The New York Times and promoted on signers’ channels. (emphasis in original)51

They understand the popular culture and use it to lobby for support on political issues around the U.S. They repeatedly claim on their website that they began to craft a plan back in 2017 to win a 50-state battle should Roe v. Wade be overturned.52 They are executing that plan on Tik Tok, Instagram, Snap Chat, and YouTube. They rallied all the popular voices they could, and they are winning battles in unexpected places.

The shift toward a greater identification with intersectional feminism and the transgender community, as well as the condemnation of those they label trans-exclusionary radical feminists, could carry unforeseen dangers. Planned Parenthood maintained a single powerful refrain throughout all the changes from 1916 to today — they are about the freedom and empowerment of women to control their own bodies. They are pro-choice, and the only legitimate choice is supporting abortion. They are about family planning. Abandoning the terminology that served them so well to embrace the language of an inclusive idea of reproductive justice multiplies allies and ticks all the right cultural boxes in the current moment, but it also threatens to introduce exactly the kind of mission creep over which Planned Parenthood dismissed Dr. Wen.

Consider how puberty blockers and hormone treatment already embroil Planned Parenthood in additional controversy and raises questions about their motivations and their willingness to display appropriate caution in the face of the seriousness of hormonally altering young people’s bodies.53 Planned Parenthood states that these battles are on mission in a broad sense because both abortion and transgender care are stigmatized but essential healthcare. The connection may be clear to them, but this issue threatens to alienate some people who otherwise found Planned Parenthood’s language about their commitment to women compelling. Even transgender advocates who work in the field of hormone treatments express doubts about Planned Parenthood’s presence in that arena.54 The effort to champion yet another controversial issue introduces the possibility of unintended division. It may not seem important now that everything is culturally going their way, but little tactical mistakes add up over time. Think of the quote from Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. A character is asked how he went bankrupt and answers, “Two ways….Gradually and then suddenly.”55

Planned Parenthood’s massive growth occurred during the years they strongly identified their mission on the cause of abortion and family planning. It was a clear and easy rallying cry built on the most polarizing issue of the last century. It is unclear whether the same type of ideological commitments can be sustained over time if the greatest weapon they had — clarity of purpose — begins to fade.

CONCLUSION

The Christian faith holds that human beings are the image bearers of God (Genesis 1:26). Our shared and intrinsic dignity is grounded in our common humanity. We are made to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:29–31). We are made for community and born into relationships. Each of us enters this world a son or daughter, perhaps a brother or sister, a cousin, a nephew or niece, a grandchild, and so forth. We are made for high purposes, most of which are beyond our capacity to fully comprehend (Psalm 86:9).

The author of Ecclesiastes speaks of the impermanence and meaningless of earthly existence (1:1–11). Our accomplishments, our riches, our prestige, our pleasure, our legacy are all meaningless and destined to pass away unnoticed and unremembered in the world. There is no greatness to be seized by man. Our only purpose is to fear God and keep his commandments (Psalm 119), the greatest of which are to love God with all that we are and love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:30–31). This view of the world calls into stark relief the riches and glory so often sought in this world, which are nothing in comparison to the people we meet in our daily lives, who we are commanded to love as part of our worship of God. It turns out human life is of inestimable worth in God’s economy (Psalm 139:13–16). Every member of the human family bears His image and is rightfully the object of our love.

For those who see the world through that lens, there is no gray area with Planned Parenthood, no complex issues to sort. Planned Parenthood is the number one abortion provider in the United States, they fight to be allowed to be the largest abortion provider in the United States. They are a destroyer, and they destroy early human life to the number of more than 370,000 a year and millions over the course of decades. They don’t even enjoy the benefit of being a good institution whose mission corrupted over time. They originated in corruption, their growth peppered with participation in acts of gross inhumanity, and have since gone beyond abortion, as if that weren’t bad enough. They set themselves up to undermine families by offering a view of sex and identity that confounds traditional wisdom to embrace the sociological soup du jour. They revel in their popularity, but the nature of their motives and the evil of their actions shows through for those who look closely.

Jay Watts is the Founder and President of Merely Human Ministries, Inc., an organization committed to equipping Christians and pro-life advocates to defend the intrinsic dignity of all human life.

NOTES

  1. A Few Good Men, directed by Rob Reiner, written by Aaron Sorkin (Culver City, CA: Columbia Pictures, 1992).
  2. Dave Umhoefer, “Glen Grotham Says Planned Parenthood Is Leading Abortion Provider,” Politifact, May 15, 2017, https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/may/15/glenn-grothman/glenn-grothman-says-planned-parenthood-leading-abo/.
  3. Caitlin Oprysko, “A Look at the Abortion Lobbying Landscape,” Politico, May 3, 2022, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2022/05/03/a-look-at-the-abortion-lobbying-landscape-00029759.
  4. Planned Parenthood Mission Statement, Planned Parenthood, accessed December 4, 2023, https://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/mission.
  5. “Relentless: 2021–2022 Annual Report,” Planned Parenthood, accessed December 4, 2023, https://cdn.plannedparenthood.org/uploads/filer_public/25/ed/25ed2675-fbbc-453b-8b35-f8ddaa025b57/281222-ppfa-annualreport-c3-digital.pdf.
  6. Press Release, “Fact Sheet: Planned Parenthood’s 2021–22 Annual Report,” Charlotte Lozier Institute, May 12, 2023, https://lozierinstitute.org/fact-sheet-planned-parenthoods-2021-22-annual-report/#_ftn3.
  7. Bob Perry, “Margaret Sanger: ‘No Gods, No Masters,” Christian Research Journal 33, no. 04 (2010), https://www.equip.org/articles/margaret-sanger-no-gods-no-masters/.
  8. Amita Kelly, “Fact Check: Was Planned Parenthood Started to ‘Control’ the Black Population?” NPR, August 4, 2015, https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/14/432080520/fact-check-was-planned-parenthood-started-to-control-the-black-population; “Opposition Claims about Margaret Sanger,” Planned Parenthood Federation of America, October 2016, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/URLs_Cited/OT2018/18-483/18-483-2.pdf.
  9. Shane Goldmacher, “Planned Parenthood Ousts President, Seeking a More Political Approach,” New York Times, July 16, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/us/politics/planned-parenthood-leana-wen.html.
  10. Alexis McGill Johnson, “I’m the Head of Planned Parenthood. We’re Done Making Excuses for Our Founder,” New York Times, April 17, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/17/opinion/planned-parenthood-margaret-sanger.html.
  11. “Indictment of Margaret Sanger, 1914,” The National Archives Foundation, accessed December 11, 2023, https://www.archivesfoundation.org/amendingamerica/indictment-margaret-sanger-1914/; Dorothy Wardell, “Margaret Sanger: Birth Control’s Successful Revolutionary,” American Journal of Public Health, July 1980, 736–42, https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/epdf/10.2105/AJPH.70.7.736.
  12. Kevin D. Williamson, “Planned Parenthood’s Century of Brutality,” National Review, June 19, 2017, https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/06/planned-parenthoods-brutal-century/.
  13. “Eugenics and Birth Control,” American Experience: The Pill, PBS, accessed December 11, 2023, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pill-eugenics-and-birth-control/.
  14. Williamson, “Planned Parenthood’s Century of Brutality.”
  15. Matt Lebovic, “The 1920s White Supremacist Influencer Beloved by President Harding — and Hitler,” The Times of Israel, January 18, 2021, https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-1920s-white-supremacist-influencer-beloved-by-president-harding-and-hitler/.
  16. “About Sanger: Birth Control Organizations — American Birth Control League History,” The Margaret Sanger Papers Project, New York University, accessed December 4, 2023, https://sanger.hosting.nyu.edu/aboutms/organization_abcl/.
  17. McGill Johnson, “I’m the Head of Planned Parenthood,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/17/opinion/planned-parenthood-margaret-sanger.html; Matt Novak, “Margaret Sanger Once Spoke to the KKK, but This Photo of the Speech Is Very Fake,” Gizmodo, December 1, 2015, https://gizmodo.com/margaret-sanger-once-spoke-to-the-kkk-but-this-photo-o-1724547991.
  18. Robert J. Cynkar, “Buck v. Bell: ‘Felt Necessities’ v. Fundamental Values?,” Columbia Law Review 81, no. 7 (1981): 1430, JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1122204; “Opposition Claims about Margaret Sanger,” 4, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/URLs_Cited/OT2018/18-483/18-483-2.pdf.
  19. Pamela Verma Liao and Janet Dollin, “Half a Century of the Oral Contraceptive Pill: Historical Review and View to the Future,” Canadian Family Physician 58, no. 12 (2012): e757–60, Pub Med, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3520685/; Erin Blakemore, “The First Birth Control Pill Used Puerto Rican Women as Guinea Pigs,” History, August 24, 2023, https://www.history.com/news/birth-control-pill-history-puerto-rico-enovid.
  20. Ernst Rudin, “Eugenic Sterilization: An Urgent Need,” The Birth Control Review (April 1933), 102.
  21. Leon Whitney, “Selective Sterilization,” The Birth Control Review (April 1933), 85.
  22. Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization (New York: Brentano’s Publishers, 1922), 263–64. H. Wayne House, “Should Christians Use Birth Control?,” Christian Research Journal 18, no. 3 (1996), https://www.equip.org/articles/should-christians-use-birth-control/.
  23. Williamson, “Planned Parenthood’s Century of Brutality,” https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/06/planned-parenthoods-brutal-century/.
  24. “Griswold v Connecticut: June 7, 1965,” Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania, accessed December 4, 2023, https://www.plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-western-pennsylvania/stay-informed/griswold-v-connecticut.
  25. Karen McCally, “Your Sexuality Is Yourself, as the Total Person You Are,” University of Rochester News Center, March 25, 2019, https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/mary-calderone-your-sexuality-is-yourself-as-the-total-person-you-are-369602/.
  26. “Alan F. Guttmacher, People’s Physician,” Population Reference Bureau, June 18, 2000, https://www.prb.org/resources/alan-f-guttmacher-peoples-physician/.
  27. Mary Steichen Calderone, “Illegal Abortion as a Public Health Problem,” originally presented before the Maternal and Child Health Section of the American Public Health Association at the 87th Annual Meeting in Atlantic City, New Jersey, October 19, 1959, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1373382/pdf/amjphnation00308-0022.pdf.
  28. Calderone, “Illegal Abortion as a Public Health Problem.”
  29. Yvonne F. Lindgren, “When Patients Are Their Own Doctors: Roe v. Wade in an Era of Self-Managed Care,” Cornell Law Review 107, no. 1 (2022): 161, https://irlaw.umkc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?params=/context/faculty_works/article/1239/&path_info=When_Patients_Are_Their_Own.pdf.
  30. Lynn Hirschberg, “Former Planned Parenthood President Faye Wattleton on Why We’re Still Fighting for Reproductive Healthcare,” W, October 16, 2017, https://www.wmagazine.com/story/planned-parenthood-president-faye-wattleton.
  31. Planned Parenthood v. Danforth (1976), Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America (2007).
  32. “Planned Parenthood Exposed by UCLA Reporter,” BTVucla, May 16, 2007, https://youtu.be/-x4aRw57fDc?si=yZ-cgbXZFVedv1tO.
  33. Alexandra Desanctis, “Planned Parenthood’s Continued Failure to Report Evidence of Child-Sex Trafficking,” National Review, January 18, 2017, https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/01/planned-parenthood-child-sex-trafficking-crimes-still-unreported/.
  34. “The Fanatical Crusade Against Planned Parenthood: Decades of Doctored Videos, Failed Entrapments, and False Accusations,” Planned Parenthood, accessed December 5, 2023, https://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/4814/4710/8959/The_Fanatical_Crusade_Against_Planned_Parenthood.pdf.
  35. See the summary videos at “Investigative Footage,” The Center for Medical Progress, accessed December 9, 2023, https://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/cmp/investigative-footage/; see also “Breaking: Planned Parenthood Admits to U.S. Supreme Court That CMP’s Undercover Videos Are True,” The Center for Medical Progress, August 23, 2023, https://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/2023/08/breaking-planned-parenthood-admits-to-u-s-supreme-court-that-cmps-undercover-videos-are-true/.
  36. Desanctis, “Planned Parenthood’s Continued Failure to Report Evidence of Child-Sex Trafficking.”
  37. John J. Lederer and Christopher A. Wetzel, “The Health Consequences of Sex Trafficking and Their Implications for Identifying Victims in Healthcare Facilities,” Annals of Health Law 23, Issue 1, Winter 2014, 77, http://www.globalcenturion.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/The-Health-Consequences-of-Sex-Trafficking.pdf.
  38. Nicole Blanchard, “Idaho Girl Went Out of State for an Abortion. Why Her Boyfriend Faces a Criminal Charge,” Idaho Statesman, November 24, 2023, https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/northwest/idaho/article281850838.html.
  39. See, e.g., “Relentless: 2021–2022 Annual Report,” 28, https://cdn.plannedparenthood.org/uploads/filer_public/25/ed/25ed2675-fbbc-453b-8b35-f8ddaa025b57/281222-ppfa-annualreport-c3-digital.pdf.
  40. Rachael Larimore, “The Most Meaningless Abortion Statistic Ever,” Slate, May 7, 2013, https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/05/3-percent-of-planned-parenthood-s-services-are-abortion-but-what-about-their-revenues.html; “Debunking Planned Parenthood’s ‘3%’ Abortion Myth,” Live Action, September 14, 2016, https://youtu.be/qtgqxvaV-8U?si=f961ovSGokX04ewr.
  41. Press Release, “Fact Sheet: Planned Parenthood’s 2021–22 Annual Report,” Charlotte Lozier Institute, May 12, 2023, https://lozierinstitute.org/fact-sheet-planned-parenthoods-2021-22-annual-report/#_ftn3.
  42. Sarah Kliff and Shane Goldmacher, “Why Leana Wen Quickly Lost Support at Planned Parenthood,” New York Times, June 17, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/us/politics/planned-parenthood-wen.html; Leana Wen, “Why I Left Planned Parenthood,” New York Times, July 19, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/opinion/sunday/leana-wen-planned-parenthood.html.
  43. E.g., Planned Parenthood YouTube Channel, accessed December 8, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/user/plannedparenthood.
  44. “When Someone Definitely Wants to Have Sex — Planned Parenthood Video,” Planned Parenthood, September 21, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmcGigHzpK0.
  45. “Relentless: 2021–2022 Annual Report,” 17, https://cdn.plannedparenthood.org/uploads/filer_public/25/ed/25ed2675-fbbc-453b-8b35-f8ddaa025b57/281222-ppfa-annualreport-c3-digital.pdf.
  46. McGill Johnson, “I’m the Head of Planned Parenthood,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/17/opinion/planned-parenthood-margaret-sanger.html.
  47. See Monica Simpson, “Reproductive Justice and ‘Choice’: An Open Letter to Planned Parenthood,” Rewire News Group, August 5, 2014, https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2014/08/05/reproductive-justice-choice-open-letter-planned-parenthood/.
  48. Planned Parenthood @PPFA, X, October 16, 2016, https://twitter.com/ppfa/status/787714782174511104.
  49. “Relentless: 2021–2022 Annual Report,” 10, https://cdn.plannedparenthood.org/uploads/filer_public/25/ed/25ed2675-fbbc-453b-8b35-f8ddaa025b57/281222-ppfa-annualreport-c3-digital.pdf.
  50. Ben Johnson, “Planned Parenthood Steps Deeply into Transgender Hormones, Including for Minors: Annual Report,” The Washington Stand, April 28, 2023, https://washingtonstand.com/news/planned-parenthood-steps-deeply-into-transgender-hormones-including-for-minors-annual-report.
  51. “Relentless: 2021–2022 Annual Report,” 25, https://cdn.plannedparenthood.org/uploads/filer_public/25/ed/25ed2675-fbbc-453b-8b35-f8ddaa025b57/281222-ppfa-annualreport-c3-digital.pdf.
  52. See, e.g., “Press Release: Planned Parenthood Announces Sweeping Initiative to Expand Reproductive Health and Rights State by State,” February 13, 2018, Planned Parenthood, https://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/planned-parenthood-announces-sweeping-initiative-to-expand-reproductive-health-amp-rights-state-by-state.
  53. Mairead Elordi, “Planned Parenthood Helping Teens Get Gender Hormones After 30 Minute Consult: Report,” The Daily Wire, October 5, 2023, https://www.dailywire.com/news/planned-parenthood-helping-teens-get-gender-hormones-after-30-minute-consult-report; Andrea Cavallier, “Planned Parenthood Is under Fire for Cartoon Ad That Encourages Children to Get On Puberty Blockers If They Think They’re Transgender and Tells Them the Drugs ‘Work Like a Stop Sign,’” Daily Mail, October 10, 2022, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11300415/Planned-Parenthood-fire-cartoon-ad-pushes-puberty-blockers.html.
  54. Elordi, “Planned Parenthood Helping Teens Get Gender Hormones,” https://www.dailywire.com/news/planned-parenthood-helping-teens-get-gender-hormones-after-30-minute-consult-report.
  55. Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1954), 136, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/67138/pg67138-images.html.
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